Transitional Care at Bethany Retirement Living

Bethany Retirement Living offers services to help with many different stages of life. At both locations, we have the region’s premier Transitional Care Unit (TCU) available for those who are well enough to leave hospital care after an injury, illness or surgery but not quite ready to resume all the daily activities at home without assistance. Dawn Hummel, Senior Executive of Bethany’s Resident Care and Rehab/TCU programs, is a hands-on leader in our community making sure that each patient feels comfortable during their stay at Bethany Retirement Living.

Dawn’s focus is on making each person successful when they return home. With Bethany’s TCU programs, “They’re getting all the right training they need to be successful,” explains Dawn. The typical patient in the TCU is there for about 14 – 30 days. “The entire time they are there we use a medical model to make sure that our staff are taking care of them with the goal that they are ready for discharge.” Bethany’s rehab/TCU services include a care team from Sanford Health, Essentia Health and Heartland Network; state-of-the-art rehabilitative therapy; occupational therapy; diet and nutritional counseling; pharmacy services; spiritual care; lab and radiology services; dependable and compassionate caregivers; physical therapy; speech therapy; exercise and social programming; wellness care and social services. “I think one of the things that makes it so nice for the patients is they have therapy available six days a week,” says Dawn.

Dawn knows that each person on her team helps make each patient successful. For example, Dawn explains that Bethany’s dieticians play a huge piece in successful TCU programs. “What we find often is that people come to the TCU they haven’t had a good education on their disease process, so our dieticians are really involved in making sure that the patients and their families have a really good understanding of all the things that go into what makes them successful when they leave.” Dawn also points out that Bethany not only gives these tools for success to the patient, but also to family members and other support members of the patient’s life.

One part of Bethany’s TCU Dawn is most proud of is Bethany’s pastoral support. “People appreciate the chaplain and the pastoral support. Patients will attend church services and it helps the recovery process.”

As a patient gets closer to discharge, Dawn makes sure that their care has an interdisciplinary approach. Dawn explains, “We often involve homecare…we also do an education plan about their medication, so they understand what medications they’re on, why they’re taking them, and understand that all people that are involved in that plan of care understand that as well.”

Dawn knows people often have misconceptions about senior living and care. “One thing we find interesting is a lot of people have a negative thought process when they are coming to a TCU. We find in the surveys that we do with patients and their families is the surprise they have when they come here. They enjoy the environment and they enjoy the therapists, they really like the food, so having that couple of weeks to transition and get them stronger is really that key satisfier and one of the things I am most proud of when we talk about our TCU.”

Bethany Retirement Living is proud to have people like Dawn on our team, making sure that each person who comes to our facilities receives the best care possible. The Transitional Care Unit teams at Bethany Retirement Living are dedicated to helping you heal, restore your strength and re-establish your independence.